FileStuff: Canadian cloud you can count on, eh?

Some will insist saying “eh” is not universally Canadian. Perhaps. But no race is actually ever 100% linguistically uniform either. Dialects will always persist due to environmental factors per evolutionary science. So take that, naysayers.

That was the “eh” bit of my headline. Now on to what I really wanna share.

source: mediacore.com

Your digital life on the cloud

As a tech enthusiast and social media nut, I’ve recently been participating in beta tests. One of those experiences was checking out filestuff.ca. FileStuff is the Canadian version of Dropbox for business. And this cloud box has chops.

I asked Steve Rogoschewsky, CEO, what inspired them to create this. ” We found that more and more people are not able to store files on Dropbox due to USA security concerns (location now) and they like the fact that everything is encrypted (not even our own techs can “see” the data if the client does not want us to).”

FileStuff boasts “military grade end-to-end AES encryption”. AES stands for Advanced Encryption Standard. Now I’m no engineer but you don’t have to explain how important this is to your average person, who likely has a lot of their own personal digital assets living online.

Now imagine how clunky it would be if businesses were to revert back to the jurassic days of back and of forth with offset printers to publish. SMB’s in particular thrive because of cloud-based operations.

Cloud Canuck and the 21st Century

I love Canada. We may not always be garrulous with our patriotism, but we are very attached to this nation and hold a quiet, undisturbed resolve. Like the way we help each other when it comes to the complexities and headaches of digital living.

“Dropbox for business can be fairly expensive,” notes Steve. “FileStuff allows for more colleagues at a better price, and everything is in Canadian dollars. Everyone loves the fact that it’s hosted in Canada and the encryption feature is key.”

Image upload is super fast. It took me minutes to upload a large file of images, versus Gmail Drive or Dropbox which tends to lag a bit.

“FileStuff has a desktop application that opens as a secure drive. All of the folder data is immediately synced between the web portal, the PC or Mac Desktop agent, or the iPad, iPhone and Android devices, ” Steve adds. On the AppStore search for “owncloud”.

It wouldn’t be a proper beta if I didn’t test FileStuff with other users and assess its performance with respect to online collaboration. So if you are curious and wanna test with me, get a free trial and let’s see what we can uncover 😉

The one thing I did ask Steve is how critical user privacy is to FileStuff’s mission and vision.

“We are similar to Edward Snowden’s recommendation of Spideroak, except we are 100% based in Canada. Our Encryption uses military grade AES encryption and we also have the “zero knowledge” type privacy policy, where the service promises to know nothing of your user account and saved content. Privacy and security are among the services top priorities server. Our system is very easy to use.”